Cornhusker Tales

Well, now I know what “corybantic” means.

I recently returned from a trip to Denver and rural Nebraska, and I have to say I’m rather proud of myself.

There were so many times that I wanted to bail on this journey.

In addition to my fear of flying, I was also renting a car, and being a New Yorker, I was convinced my lack of driving experience would result in all manner of destruction.

My brother, his wife, my niece and her husband live in the Denver area, and I was really looking forward to seeing them. I was going to Nebraska, though, to do research for a play that I’m writing.

As soon I booked the trip, I wailed to my sister that I was facing certain doom all for a play that nobody would ever produce or even read.

“Don’t look at it that way,” she said. “Think that you’re going out there to research a Pulitzer Prize winning play.”

Now, that’s the right attitude.

But I was still terrified. When Rob, our family’s designated car service driver, dropped me off at JFK at 5:30AM on the morning of my departure, I wanted to chase after him and tell him take me home.

But I forced myself to keep walking through airport security and wait for the damn plane.

When I arrived at the Avis rental car outfit at the Denver airport, I wanted to scrub the Nebraska portion of my trip and just hang around the Mile High City with my family.

I can laugh now, but I was having a high-octane conniption fit as I lurched around the Avis parking lot trying to get my Kia Sportage to behave. But once again, I beat back the fear, reined in the bucking vehicle, and headed for Nebraska.

And I had a blast.

I met some very nice people and saw parts of America that I’d had only previously seen on TV.

I drove through seemingly endless grasslands and towns that were the size of my street, with had massive grain elevators, water towns emblazoned with the place’s name and, unfortunately, many empty store fronts.

But that’s an important part of play and I think by going there and seeing the place for myself will better inform my play—as opposed to sitting on rear end in Brooklyn.

I was the only guest at the Olde Main Street Inn, a haunted 135-year-old hotel in Chadron, Neb. The ghost didn’t show up, but my lovely host, Jeanne, took such great care of me that I didn’t notice.

Jeanne’s mother had been employed at a munitions plant during World War II and had worked on the Enola Gay, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Where the West Begins

Chadron was such nice little town where two separate herds of deer come to visit so often that the dogs don’t even react when they see them.

After five days in Nebraska, it was time to hook up with my peeps. So, I zipped back to Denver, gave the Kia back to Avis, and had some quality time with my peeps.

Among other places, we visited the Hotel Stanley in Estes Park, a 140-room facility built by Freelan Oscar Stanley, co-founder of the Stanley Motor Carriage Company, that was the inspiration for the Overlook Hotel in Stephen King’s The Shining.

And then I was back in Denver airport for my flight back to New York. And that’s where corybantic comes in.

I learned of this term in some “Word of the Day” email subscription and it means wild or frenzied.

It comes from the Latin name of the priests of Cybele, a Phrygian goddess of nature, who performed fierce dances. I sure as hell wasn’t dancing on my first day back from vacation, as I got into a major blowout with my bank over my new debit card.

The bank issued me a new one after I raised concerns about a possible hack while I was traveling.

I hadn’t received the card yet and I became convinced that it would take forever to arrive, and I’d never be able to get cash ever again for as long as I lived.

Yeah, I guess I overreacted a little bit.

Looking back, I can see how my corybantic antics were prime example of the self-sabotage that I have surrendered to for so many years.

I was tired and cranky, and a work crew was jackhammering the beejeezus of the street outside my house.

This was the absolute worst time to roll up onto a monolithic financial services company and struggle with AI operators and human beings who weren’t a heck of a lot more helpful.

But I was feeling so good about the trip and how I had broad jumped clean out of my comfort zone that my sneaky subconscious just had to foul things up.

This isn’t the first time this has happened by any means, and I know it won’t be the last, but I want to use these good feelings to shine a light on my shadow self.

I can’t keep the Pulitzer people waiting.